


The Boot is Famous to the Earth

by alamorn



Series: fireflies [1]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Coming of Age, Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2018-10-24 03:32:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10733265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alamorn/pseuds/alamorn
Summary: Ilvermony isn't the only or even best magic school in America. It's just the only accredited one. Seraphina is hungry to change the world, and you need a degree to be taken seriously. Queenie is the most powerful Legilimens to be born in generations, and that sort of power needs a leash with a letter at the end.





	1. Seraphina, 1890-1900

**Author's Note:**

> title from "Famous" by Naomi Shihab Nye
> 
>  
> 
> _I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,_  
>  or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,  
> but because it never forgot what it could do.

A Critical History of Magic in America, by Esther Cohen

Copyright Linear Magic Press, 1992

> It’s a popular lie that Ilvermony is the only magic school in the country, at least among the Euro-centric model of thinking that demands an official, accredited school. However it takes only brief thought about the history of _America_ to realize that not only could a single school not hold all of our children, but that for a long time, huge parts of the population would not be _allowed_ in a school made and meant for whites.
> 
> To start with, the idea that magic came to America with the European colonists is racist tripe. While Rudolphus Voorhes may claim that magical tradition came over with Columbus, any researcher that actually does the work can point out the hundreds of traditions that existed in the Americas long before then. In this paper I will lay out the reasons why the idea of accreditation for a magical school is foolish and should be discarded along with the magical beast poaching that has so devastated our world…

* * *

 

Every morning Adesina Picquery walked the borderline of the old plantation and renewed the boundary magic. She took Seraphina with her, strapped to her chest at first, then toddling along hand in hand, then trotting and dancing and singing as her legs grew longer. They went rain or shine, wind or heat, barefoot and bareheaded so the ghosts of the land would recognize them.

Then, five days a week, Adesina Picquery took Sera to class with her. Sera loved walking the borderline and watching her mama work the boundary magic, but she loved class more. On nice days it was outside, in the sun. On bad ones, it was in the kitchen. Mama didn’t believe that magic should be separate from life, and she didn’t let her students forget that.

Even before her magic showed, Sera got to help with the class. She sharpened quills and filled inkwells. She handed out materials — reeds, sometimes, for basket weaving, or linen for dying, or iron for humility. And then she got to watch, and do things by hand as the other students struggled with their magic.

Watching class was a particular joy. She loved all the little faces turned so intently to her mama’s soft voice. Black and brown and even white, all scrunched in concentration, all struggling to hold their fingers in position. She loved the magic singing through the room, out of tune and working at cross-purposes, but joyful all the same. She loved watching her mama smooth out worries and turn a tangled spell into a smooth skein of purpose.

By the time her own magic showed, at six years old, she already knew the words, and the motions, and the taste of a spell gone right. She showed her mama on a border walk, bringing up a small man from the soil, dark as her mama, and making him dance alongside them as they walked.

When Mama laughed, Sera laughed too, lightheaded with happiness and dropped the spell. She kneeled to thank the dirt and when she looked up, Mama’s expression was funny, joy mixed with pain, or fear. A tightness, an age around the eyes Sera had never seen before.

“What is it?” she asked, burying her fingers in the soil.

Mama sighed and sat next to her, tucking her skirt between her knees. “You’re growing up,” she said. “And you’re learning so fast. Soon I’ll have nothing left to teach you.”

“That’s not true.” Sera scooted closer, so their knees were pressed together and there was nothing around them but the rich green of clover fields. _Paradise_ , she thought, with a shiver of fear. In all the stories, paradise didn’t last. “You know everything.”

Mama laughed. “I know more than most,” she admitted easily. “But that’s just because I listen. You listen too, little firefly. Soon you’ll outshine the sun.”

“Not soon,” Sera said. “Some of your students are _ancient_.”

“They’re _twenty_ ,” Mama corrected gently. “And you’re never too old to learn. Can you promise me something, firefly?”

“ _Anything_ ,” Sera promised.

“Look out at the land.” Seraphina looked. The fields swayed around them — they were cotton once, and tobacco before that, but Adesina had planted clover, and left to heal. “This land is _ours_ ,” Adesina said fiercely. “Our bones are in it, so it’s _ours_. Don’t let anyone take what’s yours from you. Promise me.”

“I promise, Mama,”

Adesina reached forward and grasped Sera’s face firmly, examining her for resolution. When she was satisfied, she pulled Sera towards her and pressed a kiss to her brow. “Never forget that,” she said. “What’s yours you must protect. Now, let’s finish setting the boundary.”

* * *

> …A blow to the Statute of Secrecy passed today, and the risk to our community has never been greater. Should we all be put in danger by unaccredited magic schools churning out under qualified hedge-witches and party trick wizards? We are calling on our readership to appeal this dangerous “Rural Exception Act”!Join us in writing MACUSA and let them know that wizards that learn their magic from out of date Almanacks should not be allowed to practice, no matter the distance between them and their Burner neighbors!…

“A Broken Statute: Safety in the Time of Flames,” Magical Times, 1898

* * *

 

A month after Sera turned eight a white man started coming around every few days. Mama sent Sera to do chores, or practice lessons when he did. The other students started whispering about him.

“He has a _wand_ ,” Ruthie said. "And he uses it for _everything_. Does he not know how to do magic?"

"Is he your daddy?" Eddie whispered. "Or does he want to be?"

"He's _not_ my daddy," Seraphina said, nose in the air. "Maybe he wants Mama to teach him but he's embarrassed because he's so old."

Ruthie nodded. "I'd be embarrassed if _I_ had to use a wand for everything _."_

_"_ Are you sure he's not your daddy? He sure does sniff around Miss Picquery an awful lot."

"Lotsa men sniff around Miss Picquery," Ruthie said before Seraphina could get past her outrage. "She's _beautiful_."

"She's tall," Eddie said, which might have been agreement, or might have just been a fact.

"I don't think Mama likes him too much," Seraphina admitted. "She always burns dinner after he visits."

Ruthie and Eddie subsided into contemplative silence. "She must _hate_ him," Ruthie said eventually.

"He's probably your daddy," Eddie said. "It only makes sense."

Seraphina heaved a sigh and pushed him into the dirt. They tustled there, in the shade of the peach tree, until they got bored.

 

That night, while Mama helped her scrub the dirt out of the lines in her hands, she asked. "Who's that white man that comes by?"

Adesina sighed through her nose. "That's Charles. Is that what you were wrestling with Eddie about?"

"He thinks he's my daddy," Sera said, watching Adesina closely.

"Who, Charles?" Adesina laughed. "No, honey, he's not. The man that sired you could never find this place, let alone walk on. Charles is from the next town over. He's an Ilvermony man, and I teach his son." She laughed again, totally devoid of humor. "You can see why he's upset."

"What does he want?" Sera asked and Adesina sighed.

"The whole wide world to fit in his view," she said. "But right now he wants me to send you to Ilvermony. You're almost old enough."

"But I like learning from you."

Adesina smiled. "And I like teaching you. If you want to meet him, you can, next he's here. I will not sell Ilvermony to you."

"I'll meet him," Sera said. "And I'll tell him you're better than any stupid boarding school could ever be."

Adesina laughed. Sera liked watching her mama laugh. Her eyes crinkled up and she leaned her head back, and the sun shone from her face. "It will be good to see you tell him that."

 

The next time the white man came, Sera followed them to the porch. Adesina passed her a basket of peas to shell and Charles tilted his head at her. "Finally letting me talk to the girl herself?" he said.

"Sera reminded me that I can trust her to make her own decisions," Adesina said easily. "So. Do your best. Convince her."

Charles sat stiffly on the floor across from her. He did everything stiffly. Behind him, her mother sat gracefully on a chair and called a glass of iced tea with a wave of her hand. "Hello," he said and stuck out a hand. She shook it tentatively. "I'm Charles. Beumont. I'm Rick's dad."

"Hello," she said, when he seemed to be waiting for it.

"I think you should go to Ilvermony."

She waited for him to go on. He shifted uncomfortably. "Why?" she prompted eventually.

He glanced at her mother. "If you go to Ilvermony, people will take you seriously."

"People take Mama seriously."

"No," he said. "They don't. People around here do. She's the most powerful witch in the area. And she doesn't have a voice in MACUSA. If _she_ went to Ilvermony, she could represent all of Georgia now, enter legislation, not just teach. It wouldn't be swamp magic if she went to Ilvermony."

Adesina's hand tightened on her glass behind him, but she said nothing.

"Mama's not a swamp witch," Sera said.

"You misunderstand," Charles said, frustrated. "Your mother is the most powerful person I know. She's the best teacher I know. _I_ went to Ilvermony, don't you understand? The education here is better, more rooted in the land. More natural. Magic loves Rick. I have to bully it. And no one in MACUSA will ever take her seriously, because she doesn't have a certificate." He coughed. "It's wrong. But it's how it is. You deserve a voice, even if your mother won't claim hers."

"Thank you, Charles," Adesina said. "But I have a voice. I take up as much space as I want. What would I do with a seat in the Senate? I have freedom here. That's not nothing."

"Of course not," he said, quiet. "I only…"

"I know, Charles. Sera will have a voice no matter the choice she makes. She's heard you out. She'll give us an answer when she's ready."

He nodded, stiffly, and left.

Sera shelled peas for a while longer, thinking, quiet. "Is what he said true?"

"True enough," Adesina said. "There are always those that will not respect you for this education. Generally…" She trailed off. "Generally, they would not respect you either way."

 

Seraphina thought. She walked the boundary and thought. She wove and thought. She made flame dance in her palm and thought. She lay out in the sun and thought.

And then, when she took the woven cloth around to the houses that ordered it, she stopped thinking. A white woman with a wand tucked in her pocket held up the ream of fabric and said, "Is this spell-woven or hand?"

"Spell," Seraphina said. She did not say _, like you ordered_ , or _by the students._

The woman clicked her tongue. "Well, I'll give it a good washing, make sure that swamp magic hasn't left any stink in it. You can go."

"Ah," Seraphina said, throat closing up with fury. She went. She finished her round.

She went home, and found her mother.

"I'll go to Ilvermony," she said. Her skin was hot from the sun, but she felt ice cold. Not a firebird, or firefly at all. Her center was frozen.

“You sure?” Adesina asked, her face a blank.

“If I go to Ilvermony…” Sera started, going slow so her thoughts would be in order. “They won’t be able to call me a hedge witch or a swamp witch. They’ll have to respect me, if I do it their way and do it better.”

“Oh, baby,” Adesina said with a bitter smile. “They’ll never respect you, but you can make them bite their tongues.”

Sera paused, flexed her left hand. “Is that enough?”

“No,” Adesina said, “but you’ll have to make do.”

 


	2. Queenie, 1901-1910

> Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the last great Legilimens, Tiberius Cadwallader. As the years have passed, I have noted people beginning to question if he was truly as powerful as the legends say. Surely no man could hear thoughts just by passing near you, with no spells, and not an ounce of effort! scoff the non-believers. Surely his skills have been exaggerated! No one could overcome even the most talented of Occulemency with barely a blink!
> 
> Wrong! Tiberius was exactly as talented as the legends say, if not more so. I had the good fortune to know him and study under him for a few scant months, and while his Legilimency was a natural born talent and impossible to replicate without that natural talent I learned more from him than I learned in all my years at Hogwarts…
> 
> New York Magic Daily, 1904, A. Anastas

* * *

They found her out when she was four. That’s when she started hearing more than just Tina. There was small room after small room with curious man after curious man, and always, always the whispering of his thoughts. That’s how it started — whispers. When she was close to a person she could hear their voice, even if their lips weren’t moving. For everyone but Tina, it was quiet, hard to hear. Most of the time, it was nothing she wanted to hear, anyway.

Tina was different. Twins, Queenie could always hear Tina’s thoughts like they were her own. The only surprise was ever that Tina couldn’t hear hers back.

As they got older, Queenie got stronger. The voices got clearer, and the apartment got smaller. Or the girls got bigger. Either way, space was tighter. She roamed more, clinging tight to Tina’s hand as they went out and came back. And then one day, she heard her papa say, “What can we cut? If I skip lunch, we can make it to payday—“ and Queenie crawled into his lap at the rickety little table in the worn down little kitchen and said, “I don’t need breakfast, daddy, I don’t like oatmeal anyway.”

“What?” he said, with his lips.

“You shouldn’t skip lunch,” she told him, putting her chubby, child’s hands on his cheeks and looking him solemnly in the eye. “You’re a big boy. You need your energy.”

“Queenie, honey,” he said, putting his big hands over hers and pulling them down to his chest. “Who told you I was skipping lunch?”

She gave him a look, blonde curls falling in front of her face so she had to blow them away with a huff. “You did. Just now.”

“I didn’t say anything, baby girl,” he said, and leaned back and called into the living room where her momma was sewing up a rip in Tina’s dress while Tina looked on anxiously. “Chaya, come here.”

“I’m busy, Sol, handle her yourself.”

“Of course you are,” he said without moving his lips and she giggled.

“You learned the trick!” she said, delighted.

“What do you mean?” he said with his mouth.

“Teeny does it all the time — talking without your mouth! You learned it!”

“ _Chaya_ ,” he called again, with more urgency, lips round and open.

“ _What_?” Momma snapped.

“I think Queenie’s a Legilimens.”

There was a long pause and Queenie played with her daddy’s curls. They were dark and thick and coarse, totally unlike her own fine blonde locks. He was saying a lot of things very fast, but she couldn’t catch most of it, and it wasn’t real sentences, the type of fragments Momma tsk’ed at Queenie for using.

Momma came into the kitchen trailed by Tina like a little brown shadow. Tina’s dress was still clutched in one hand, the needle under the pad of her thumb. “What do you mean?”

“Tell her what you told me,” he said to Queenie without his mouth.

Queenie rolled her eyes. “Daddy learned Teeny’s trick and he wants to show it off.”

Slowly, Momma said, “And what trick is that?”

“Talking without your mouth.” Queenie leveled an imperious look over the room. “He’s not as good as Teeny, though.”

“Can you hear this?” Momma said, but it was muffled and quiet, like she was whispering on the other side of a thin wall.

Queenie shook her head. “You’re even worse than Daddy!”

“Well,” Momma said. “Isn’t that something.”

* * *

The MACUSA building towered over them and bustled with people. An insistent whispering from every direction filled her ears, and she grasped Tina’s hand tighter. Her mother pushed on her back, between her shoulder blades, gently to keep her moving and after a moment of resistance, Queenie went.

They lived in one of the Burner Jewish neighborhoods, surrounded by people her parents know from the old country. To see magic used so unselfconsciously, so blatant and unwary of nosy neighbors, made her uneasy, and hopeful.

She wasn’t allowed to gawk for long, hurried along to a small room that had nothing of the magic of the entrance. There was a man muttering to himself at a desk covered in papers and books. A huge snake rested in a tank that covered the entirety of one wall. It, at least, did not murmur.

Mama pushed her into the hard chair across from the desk. “Here she is.”

He looked up finally, pushing his thin rimmed glasses up his nose. “As promised.” With a different voice, a less nasal one, he said, “Doesn’t look like much.”

“You don’t either, mister,” she told him, which was unforgivably rude, but she was tired and there was so much talking. Mama and Tina hadn’t shut up the whole way here and then all of the big scary MACUSA wizards just chatted and chatted.

He tilted his head at her. He really was a nothing sort of man, with the sort of face you’d forget the second you looked away. His mouthless voice was very clear, though. “So you are a Legilimens,” he said without his mouth. “Do you know what that means, little one?”

“No,” she said, “but I’m not doing anything. It’s everyone else doing a trick.”

He smiled thinly, and turned to Mama and Tina. “We’ll be talking for a while, if you wouldn’t mind stepping out.”

“No,” Mama said, muffled, “No, I won’t leave you alone with my daughter you bloodless creep.” But then she gathered Tina up and said, much more clearly, “We’ll be back in half an hour.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, and locked the door behind her with a flick of wandless magic. “Now, Malka, isn’t it?”

“No one calls me that.” Queenie found that her hands were in fists.

“Mm. Well, Malka, Legilimency is the art of mind reading, to be imprecise. Normally it takes a great deal of practice and strength of will to be any good at it,” and his voice shifted, his mouth stopped moving, “but you seem to have a natural talent.”

“I’m a good girl,” she told him, uncertain of what he wanted.

“That has nothing to do with this, but I’m glad to hear it, Malka. Now, a power like yours must be trained or it will overwhelm you.”

Queenie set her jaw and didn’t respond. She wanted her mama.

“Now. Tell me what I’m thinking.” A wall of images hit her — rain dripping down a window, a feeling of boredom, fireflies in a jar, pulsing and flashing — and as quickly as they hit her, they were gone. She gasped.

“Rainy day,” she told him, automatically. “Night in the country. Not long ago but you’ll never go back. You don’t miss it but it’s like a missing tooth or one less step than you expected. A jerk.”

He rested his chin on his hand. He looked pleased, and felt it too, like the heat rising from the kettle in the winter. “Very good. You got even more than I intended.”

“What’s your name?” she demanded, suddenly angry.

“Why don’t you tell me?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Hand.” He held out his hand and she took it. His skin was cold and his veins stood out blue. No rough patches, thin fingers, clean nails. He didn’t like working with his hands. She didn’t need to look in his head to know that.

Touching his skin made his — thoughts, they were his thoughts, he wasn’t whispering. Touching his skin made them louder, clearer, but not more complete. He thought of lunch, and she couldn’t figure out how to bring his name to the surface.

“What’s your name?” she asked and he thought, _Not that easy_.

But there was also a flicker of a thought, a gasp of a syllable. Ay.

“Eric?”

_No_.

“Aaron?”

_Are you asking or telling_? But there was a flick of acknowledgement he couldn’t hide, an automatic tuning of attention.

“Telling.”

“You’re right,” he said. Then he set her to pulling thought after thought after his head. It was incredible, and more difficult than anything she had ever done. She lost track of time, until her mama stormed through the door and shouted at Aaron. So much noise and thoughts blasted into her head, loud and overwhelming as a whole street of cars backfiring.

She cringed in her seat, and Tina grabbed her arm and led her out of the room, her thoughts soothing. _Mama let me get pudding while we waited, it was very sweet. You are so brave, Queenie, I couldn’t have done that. We will see Mrs. Rosenthal’s cat when we go home. Think of the cat. How soft, and that little meow._

When they were in the hallway, Queenie sat against the wall and let out a huge sigh. Tina sat next to her and laced their fingers together. Dog noses, cold and wet. The heat of the fire in winter. Ice cream. Tina filled her mind with sense memories. What a relief, what a freedom.

After Mama yelled at Aaron for a while, they went home and did _not_ get to see Mrs. Rosenthal’s cat and Mama yelled at Papa for a little while, and then the next day they went back to MACUSA and she saw Aaron again. And the next day, and the one after that, and so it went.

Every day he asked her to do something harder. To find certain memories. To sit in a room full of people and tell him the thoughts of every one of them. To sit in a room full of people and tell him the thoughts of one and only one.

It didn’t get easier. It left her feeling raw and open, and Tina had to lead her home by the hand and then she lay in the dark with a cold towel over her face.

Burner school was as strange for Tina as it was for Queenie — Burners seemed to think differently, and sometimes it was hard to remember that they didn’t have any magic. Most kids didn’t go to Burner school before Ilvermony started at 11, but Momma had said, “Ilvermony doesn’t teach sums, Sol, or reading, and I don’t have the time to do it myself. They’ll go to Hebrew school on the weekends, and if they slip up, well, there’s stranger things than a child believing in magic,” and that was that.

“We’re going to Ilvermony?” Tina asked as Queenie colored. “I thought Missus Levi would teach us magic. And Mister Anastas is teaching Queenie to eavesdrop.”

“No,” said Papa, scooping Tina up and tossing her in the air. “ _You’re_ going to Ilvermony, the both of you! Mr. Anastas will set up a tutor for Queenie there, but we want our smart little girls to get the _best_ education.”

He was thinking other things, fast, dark, things, about food and money and fame, but Queenie couldn’t get a handle on them.

> Rumor has swept New York — has the next great Legilimens truly been born? And in our own dear city? No one we approached was willing to give us a name, but we were able to piece together some information. Our new Legilimens is a girl about to enter Ilvermony. Make the neighborhood proud, little Legilimens!…
> 
> “The Next Great Legilimens,” New York, New Magic, 1910, Ada Overton

 


	3. Seraphina, 1911-1916

> The Statute of Secrecy has always been the great magical leveler -- no matter the tensions between class, race, or sex, wizard-kind has always needed a certain amount of solidarity. An uneasy solidarity, certainly, built on pretending we are somehow more enlightened than those that suffer through life without the joys of the magical world, but a solidarity nonetheless.
> 
> This solidarity has always depended on a few careful lies, and thus has always been fragile. The largest lie is this: All wizards and witches are equals, no matter their blood or the color of their skin.
> 
> There have been many blows to this lie, the most recent being the English debacle. In America, one of the first blows to truly dent the foundation of the lie was the career of President Seraphina Picquery.
> 
> Picquery is one of the most controversial Presidents. There are many factors influencing that, of course, including the incident with Gellert Grindelwald and the obscurus, but to look only at her presidency is to miss the forest for the trees.
> 
> Her controversies started when she was sorted into all four houses at Ilvermony and continued through her stint as an auror, her role in the Great War, and her friendship with Percival Graves.
> 
> A more salaciously minded essayist might gush over the remarkable intimacy of that friendship, and indeed many have. However, Graves is relevant to this essay only because of how the wider MACUSA tried to pit the two of them against one another at every turn. Despite the attempts to encourage infighting, theirs seemed a stable and supportive relationship that outlasted either of their political careers. They became aurors together, and served in the Great War side by side. This likely provided the base that led to President Picquery choosing Graves as her Head of Magical Security, later on in her career.
> 
> Esther Cohen, _A_ _CriticalHistory of Magic in America_

 

Seraphina would never admit that she had struggled through Ilvermony — her grades certainly didn’t show it — but she was glad to be out. The only thing she’d gotten worth having was Percy at her side. Otherwise, it had been a long, slow slog of loss. Loss of innocence sounded melodramatic. She’d lost the callouses on her feet, and some of the deftness of her fingers. She’d lost touch with her mother’s students. She’d lost her accent.

And what had she gained? A piece of paper, the grudging respect of her peers. An enlightening conversation with Charles. A job with the aurors, a path clear to MACUSA.

The auror job was made easier by Percy's presence. She'd hated him at first, a gawky, snobby boy with ears too big for his head, but after three duels and a fistfight they'd discovered they were friends. If standards had permitted it, she might have gotten a room with him to split rent. As it was, they had meals together before and after their shifts.

He was interested in Homicide. She was interested in a fast track to the Senate.

Neither of them was lucky enough to get what they were interested in. They were both working beats.

She practiced her tracking spells, and how to put up shields between a terrified witness and an interested audience. She learned how to disarm and disable. She learned how to listen to her mentor, a stocky man who always knew who to talk to and how.

His name was Ibras Shatterglass and he called her "little firecracker" and slapped her shoulder. He was dirty, of course, but not so bad for all that -- he took bribes but never looked too far out of the way. He taught her how to plant a spell that would carry voices back to her. He taught her how to see footprints hours old bright as gold. He taught her how to measure her needs against those of the state.

It seemed as good an entry to politics as any.

Percy's mentor, on the other hand, was straight as an arrow.

"She'll make an honest man of you," Sera teased over coffee before their shift.

Percy rolled his eyes without lifting his head from his hand. "She'll get me killed," he complained. "The woman has no sense. Just purpose."

"As long as her purpose is just," Sera said archly and he groaned back at her.

"Yesterday we were in Gnarlack’s bar and she just. Threatened him. Right there. Surrounded by his buddies." Percy stared beseechingly up at her. "Aurors have disappeared for that before, you know."

"I know. Maybe she's powerful enough she doesn't have to care."

"No," Percy said slowly. "No, I think she just hates crime."

"Well, if you can keep her safe, you can keep anyone safe."

He lifted his head to look at her straight on, squinting a little. "You have a plan for me."

She grinned, then tamped it down. "Of course, Percy. You're my friend."

He grinned back. "Well, what'll it be? Bodyguard to Senator Seraphina? You'll have to pay me very well, and stop making fun of my hair."

"I'll stop making fun of your hair when you get a better cut," she said. "And...that's a place to start, certainly. Stay an auror for a while, Percy, I think you'll be good at it."

"Aiming higher?" he asked. She'd first liked him for his cleverness so she couldn't hold it against him.

"We'll see," she said.

When they were done, she started her rounds. She met a great deal of Ibras’ sources for him at this point — “Building relationships,” he told her, “is the most important part of this job. You want to be the first person they think of, when something goes right or wrong. You want them to trust you, to know you. You want your word to be your bond, and everyone to know that. Never break a promise, if you can help it.”

It wasn’t bad advice, but she was fairly sure that he had her make the rounds because his knees ached in the cold, and not because he wanted her to build her own sources. No matter the reason, she always took a few hours each morning to take the temperature of the city, her pockets stuffed with small gifts to ease the way — fairy cigarettes, troll tonic for hair loss, a slip of paper with a place and time. Small things. The grease in the wheels.

Ibras didn’t know, but she made rounds of her own, too. The Senators offices, talking to staffers, asking a question here and there, softened by gifts of food and inquiries dropped.

MACUSA was beginning to learn her name, though it didn’t know why yet.

 

> The War across the sea has dragged in our European cousins! The Burners have sunk their conflict into the land, deep enough to break leylines. Our cousins have mobilized to protect their lands and schools, and we must not let them struggle alone!

Magical Times, 1915

 

Going to war was an easy decision, when it came down to it. It shouldn't have been -- staying in America would have afforded her huge opportunities for advancement as seat after seat opened up. She could get years of administrative experience with very little competition. But she knew that veterans would get preferential treatment when they returned, and besides --

She yearned to fight. She wanted to throw spells and fists. She was so _angry_ all the time, so frustrated and going to war would mean making a name for herself anyway. She could justify it.

She went home to tell her mother. Adesina was in the kitchen when she popped through the fireplace, elbow deep in dough.

Adesina welcomed her in with a floury hug. “Firefly!” she said. “It’s been too long. I’m glad New York has not yet stolen you away from me.”

“My heart will never live there,” she assured Adesina, snagging a grape from the bunch on the table and popping it in her mouth.

“Just your body?” Adesina said, eyebrow raised. Seraphina huffed a laugh. She’d never been able to hide anything from her mother.

“And my mind,” she admitted easily. “For the moment. I want to be a Senator. I want to make it easier for local schools to be accredited.”

“A worthy goal,” Adesina said, voice dry. “Though I feel you could work at it just as effectively from home.”

“You don’t think I’ll succeed.”

Adesina shrugged with one shoulder. “Maybe you will. I won’t hold my breath.”

“They’ll have to take me seriously.”

“Why?” Adesina laughed.

“I’m going to war,” she said and Adesina’s face shuttered, all mirth gone. “I’m going to make a name for myself. They won’t be able to brush me off, if I prove myself.”

“You think commanders care about soldiers?” Adesina said. “Even good ones? You will prove nothing but biddable. That is _not_ the way to do it. You have a name already, Seraphina Picquery. It will not mean more written on a casualty list.”

Seraphina squared her shoulders. “Mama, veterans will get preference in hiring after the war. And it’s not so dangerous — we’re not _Burners_ , after all, fighting their hopeless Great War. I’ll just be stationed around Beauxbatons, holding the ley line around the school.”

"You'll die there," Adesina told her, face a mask of bronze. "If you go, you'll die, and no one will remember your name. The land will forget you. This is not your fight, firefly."

"That's what they'll say, if I stay, Mama," Seraphina said, tongue suddenly thick and clumsy. "They'll say I don't care for all magic users, just the ones that look like me."

"And what's wrong with that?" Adesina snapped. "That's all they've been doing, anyway."

"You were the one that told me," Seraphina said, "that I have to be better to get less. I am better, Mama. I will not be content with less. I have to go."

Adesina passed a hand over her face, preemptive grief etching deep lines around her eyes. "I have never tried to stop you in your tracks before," she said, voice deep and sorrowful. "I will not now. Do not expect me to forgive you."

Seraphina bent and pressed a kiss to her brow. "I'm sorry, Mama."

" _Go!_ " Adesina cried, flinging a hand out. The door out of the kitchen slammed open.

Seraphina blinked back tears and went, walked the border of her old home once more. In boots, it was not the same. The land was already forgetting her.

 

> As the war drags on, we must question whether it was truly wise to send so many of our youth to fight battles not our own. One might hope that our European cousins would be adept enough to hide themselves without joining open conflict. That they seemingly are not brings to mind questions about motivations to join the war…

The Daily Scry, 1917

 

This was not how she thought she’d see France. Not that she’d planned to, truly. Her ambitions had always been more local. What did she care about Europe? Her mother was right after all. She never should have left home.

She’d heard of the beauty of France. She had not yet seen it. There were no gently rolling hills here, no lush greenery, no vineyards. There was only mud and barbed wire and the sharp crack of Burner weaponry, and in the distance, Beauxbatons.

The trench followed a ley line. When shells threw her into the wall, the mud tasted like magic. Across the distance of No Man's Land, there was another trench. In it were Burners, clutching their guns like they clutched their wands.

Another whistle of a shell, a burst of choking gas. Her superior was too slow to get his bubble in place and she watched him crumple, screaming. The air was thick with mud and magic. An end had been promised for months now.

Her eyes were wide. They were hot and dry and she couldn't close them, not when another shell might crash down any second.

She shoved herself away from the wall and started to pull her boots off one handed, wand still at the corner of her jaw, protecting her air. This was not her land. She would make it remember her all the same.

"Sera," Percy gasped, wand tight against his jaw, bubble still up. "What are you doing?"

The gas was still thick around their feet. When she set her first bare foot down, it burned her skin. She couldn't stand this another moment. She undid the laces on the second boot, and forced it off, stripped her socks off. Mud squelched between her toes. Strange magic buzzed at the edges of her skin, prickling and a sigh away from familiar.

"Land is land," she told him, wiggling her toes deeper into the mud, reaching. "What's yours you must protect," she murmured. "Time to set the boundary."

She pressed her hand to the wall, searching for some connection. She hated this cold land, but that was the work of men, not earth. "Let me help you," she said. "Help me shake these fleas from your back. Help me mend your bones."

She reached out with her own magic, the same way she did when she walked the boundary line in Georgia, an easy seeking and calling and laying down, and with a crack like a tree falling, the ley line surged to meet her.

The magic was strange and almost too powerful, scorching her from within. She burned, mouth dropping open to gasp her pain. Fire danced a nimbus around her fingertips. "Thank you," she whispered as Percy scrambled out of her way.

And then she walked, straight through the earth. It split for her, like butter before a hot knife. She was so _heavy_ , carrying the weight of the world, but she kept walking as her thighs ached, as her knees and ankles whined under the weight. The earth _screamed_ , the power it sent her fizzing and uneven and painful to channel. She kept going anyway. The world was nothing more than the steps she took, the dirt in front of her face, her hand.

And then she burst through to the enemy line. A German stared at her, eyes huge, stumbling back from the hundred meter long channel she'd cut in the earth. She thought about saying something to him -- it wasn't his fault he was here, anymore than it was hers. Less, probably. He was a Burner. He didn’t even know what his troop had stumbled upon. She'd had a choice. But nothing she could say would make this any different.

Wordlessly, she pressed both palms to the walls of the enemy trench and called to the ley line. With a shudder, the trench slammed shut. It slammed around her, too, but the ley line gave her the strength to cut through to the surface. When she stood, trembling like a newborn foal on ground higher than any she'd seen in months, she could see what she'd done.

The trench had closed for as far as she could see. How many Burners had been trapped in the collapse of mud? She didn't know, couldn't tell. Didn't want to know.

She dropped to her knees and threw up. "Thank you," she told the land again as she wiped her mouth with a muddy arm. When she turned back to her own trench, her stomach dropped.

It had closed too.

Of course it had. The land did not care for the uniforms people wore.

She ran back as fast as she could, stumbling and slipping in the mud of No Man's Land. By the time she got there, Percy had struggled out of the mud and pulled another five men out of the ground.

"Everyone had their shields up," he told her, "second you started cutting through like that. Can you do that again to get the rest out?"

She reached out and found nothing but the dregs of her own magic, almost fully depleted. "No," she said, shaking her head. "I promised to help the land, she doesn't see how opening more holes would be helpful."

Percy spat, but there was still mud in his teeth. "Figures," he said. "Well, best get digging the old fashioned way then."

She nodded, and scanned for active magic. Dozens of bubbles waited within her range of detection. She chewed on her lip as she looked at the scar where the tunnel had stretched past sight. "Bad way to die," she said, starting to dig at the closest bubble. Her magic lifted half the dirt she'd told it to, and she thought of digging out hundreds by hand and despaired.

"Yes," Percy agreed, working at another. Everyone he'd already managed to free that _could_ did the same. "How does it feel, to be a force of nature?"

She licked her lips and tasted mud and blood and magic. That's all there was, anymore. She didn't say, "It feels right." Instead, she set her head down and worked as fast as she could.

 

They didn't manage to free everyone from the mud. The newspapers called her a hero anyway.

It took her three months to be able to ask how many she'd killed, and Percy swallowed and looked at the ground. "They don't have the numbers," he said.

"How _many_?" she asked again. It wasn't begging. It wasn't.

His eyes flicked from his boots to her eyes and back again. "You don't want to know," he told her finally. "I'm sure you'll find out. But it won't be from me."

 

It would have been nice if the war ended when she closed the earth. It didn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ley lines as a concept didn't really pop up until 1921 and they're fully bullshit so just pretend there's a real wizarding version and it's a coincidence that they're called the same thing


	4. Queenie, 1917-1920

> While the Burner war rages on, the magical front made great strides when New York’s own auror turned soldier, Seraphina Picquery, collapsed the trenches surrounding Beauxbatons.

New York Magic Times, 1917

Ilvermony was not so far from New York, in the grand scheme of things. It was still too far to visit easily, and the news of their parents death took longer to reach Queenie and Tina than it might have.

"They forgot us," Tina had said, face ashen and angry, letter in her hand. "Dragon pox. It took them quick, Tante Ruth says. Took half the building, it sounds like."

Queenie had sat on the edge of her bed and cried until Tina loosened enough to join her.

They had to go into Boston proper to a Burner synagogue to say Kaddish and buy yartzheit candles.

Queenie's darkest secret centered around their parents' death. She started failing her classes right after, let all the teachers think it was grief.

It wasn't. She'd heard how they planned to put her to work -- a Legilimens like her? It was unthinkable not to use her to her fullest potential, they thought. A sin to squander a talent like that, they thought. MACUSA always needed a mindreader, after all. Interrogation, or Burner relations, or something without a title -- the possibilities were endless.

It was a cruelty to scrape through a person’s mind and report on it, _she_ thought. Cruel and unfair, to judge by thoughts over actions. And besides, how long would it be till they asked her to look for not threats but grievances? Blackmail, and loyalties, and no room to make mistakes even in their own minds. She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t trust MACUSA, couldn’t trust herself.

So Queenie failed and apologized, and batted her eyes, and let them all think it was grief, or stupidity, instead of fear.

Tina understood, of course. Tina was as good at understanding Queenie as Queenie was at understanding everyone else. So when they graduated and made their way back to New York, Tina was the one who tossed the classified section with a MACUSA position circled down in front of her. “Cheer up, Queenie,” she said. “New York’s a big place.”

Queenie read the ad — wand permit office, must be friendly and personable. “If I go to MACUSA, Dr. Anastas will tell everyone about me, and they’ll want to use me, and failing will have been useless.”

Tina dropped into the chair next to her, and Queenie waved her hand to bring over a mug and the teapot from the stove. When it finished pouring, Tina stuck her nose in it and inhaled the steam. “When’s the last time Dr. Anastas went down to the wand permit office anyway?”

"Ages ago," Queenie had to admit. "He thinks rude things about the girls that work there."

"That's because Dr. Anastas is an ass," Tina said easily and Queenie grinned into her hand.

"Don't be rude!" she laughed. "He might hear you."

"You won't tell on me," Tina said. "And besides, aurors are allowed to be rude. Encouraged, even."

Queenie sighed and rested her chin on her hand. "Tell me about it. How's your mentor?"

Tina shivered. "I'm learning a lot." she said. _I might kill her_ , she thought. Queenie beamed at her.

"That good?"

Tina rolled her eyes. "It's not all bad. I _am_ learning a lot. She's just...intense," she said. _Rude_ , her thoughts supplied. _Demanding. Abrasive. Smells like an ashtray._

Queenie worked some kitchen magic as Tina took her shoes off. By the time Tina was comfortable in her house slippers, food was on the table. "Is that all?" she pressed. "Have you done anything exciting yet?"

"I don't know why you bother asking," Tina admitted, slipping easily between speech and thought. When Queenie wasn't looking at her, she couldn't tell the difference. Everyone else she could, at this point, but Tina had always been closer to her than her own heart. Sometimes, in the early morning, she still couldn't tell their thoughts apart.

"It's _polite_ ," Queenie told her. It was an old conversation, and one they'd have again. "And I like to hear the way you tell it, when you're telling on purpose."

"Well," Tina said, and served herself some stuffed cabbage. "The office is still a bit empty. I hear the war will be over soon, and that'll change things. I think Walsh wishes she could have gone, but she's too old. That might be why she's so angry all the time."

"If I get the wand permit office job, I could tell you," Queenie said. "That sort of thing is always right at the top."

"Don't go prying for my sake. Besides, I need a hobby while we're doing patrols. If you tell me what she's _actually_ thinking, what will I amuse myself with?"

"Okay," Queenie said. "Hey, do you think they'll like me at the wand permit office? I did flunk."

"Queenie," Tina said, taking her hands around the plates of stuffed cabbage and potatoes. "You'd know that better than me, but anyone who dislikes you is rubbish anyways. Who cares? You know why you failed."

 

The next day, Queenie turned in her application. A week later, she started work. 

 

> Finally, the Burners have signed an armistice, and retreat from the field of battle! Our brave troops, who have spent so much time and magic defending the European schools are finally returning home. Prepare a warm welcome for the heroes in your community! Here are some ideas for welcome home parties: first, you must choose a theme…

The Magical Inquirer, 1918

 

Queenie liked the wand permit office. Only half of her job was actually the (truly boring) wand permit work. Mostly, she was like a MACUSA wide tea service. When she told Tina that, Tina made a face and said it sounded horrendous, but Queenie liked it. She liked making tea, and she liked meeting everyone, and she liked keeping up with the gossip.

It was amazing, the things people would think, when they didn't think there was anyone listening.

And no, she never wanted to go into Interrogation, or be a spy, but it was still _fun_ , rooting through thoughts and finding the things people didn't want to share.

"It's disrespectful," Tina said one night, while Queenie told her about the affairs going on in the upper levels of MACUSA and the affairs that _weren't_ but were desperately wanted. Tina didn't sound very sure, though, and her thoughts said, _Go on._

"Well, yes," Queenie admitted. "But it's not like I tell everyone! Just you. And you don't tell anyone, do you?"

_Who would I tell, other than you?_

"I don't know why you think you can't make friends," Queenie started, then closed her eyes and brought the lecture back about five notches. "You're awfully likeable, you know." She bumped Tina with her hip as she passed the chair Tina was reading in. “ _I_ like you an awful lot."

Tina rolled her eyes and swatted her with her book. _You don't count_.

"I count for more than _anyone_ ," Queenie protested, laughing. "Hey, you know what's really interesting? The new Senator's arriving tomorrow. Everyone has different thoughts about her."

"Really?" Tina said, leaning forward. Her mind buzzed with interest. "I heard she's a war hero."

"She's been in the news more than anyone I know," Queenie said, sitting down across from Tina and waving a hand to bring dinner over. "She was sorted into all four houses, you know."

" _That's_ the new Senator?" Tina whistled, low and admiring. "I didn't put it together."

"Well," said Queenie, preening a bit, "I get to meet her tomorrow, help get her MACUSA office set up."

 

Queenie had never helped set up a Senator's office before, and this was a special occasion anyway. The previous Georgia Senator had had a heart attack and had to step down as his health recovered, so it was a special election, done as quickly as proper. She hadn't paid much attention to it -- she never planned to visit Georgia, and so did not care overmuch about it's politics.

But she'd heard so much of Seraphina Picquery in the days since she'd won. It seemed _everyone_ had an opinion about her. She'd been an auror before she went to war and that had made as much of an impression as her exploits in school, or her war time heroics.

She was already there when Queenie arrived, which had thrown everyone into a tizzy. There were stress-thoughts flying as fast through the air as furniture, and Queenie slotted herself into assisting a desk lift.

Seraphina was beautiful, which mattered very little. Her mind, on the other hand, was a spot of cool focus, a slippery stream that Queenie could thrust a hand into but not grasp. Occulemency, she supposed, and more effective than most.

And behind Seraphina's shoulder lurked the target of half the gossip about her. Percival Graves. Something about Seraphina must have rubbed off, Queenie observed. Graves thought in straight lines, following each idea to the end with no unauthorized branching. It felt a little like a train track.

Queenie smiled to herself as they set the desk down, and then brought the chairs in. Seraphina leaned against her desk, wand nowhere to be seen, doing wandless magic without pause.

She might have been an Ilvermony graduate, but _that_ was not something she learned in Ilvermony.

It only took a few more minutes to get the office set up and then the rest of the helpers streamed out. Queenie stayed back a moment. "If you'll be taking the afternoon to settle in, I can bring up a tea service. If you're heading out, I can recommend some restaurants!"

Seraphina -- Senator Picquery, Queenie reminded herself. She'd earned that title, and didn't need Queenie being over familiar, just because Queenie could half-read her mind. Senator Picquery tilted her head. She wore a silken headwrap that accentuated the angle. "You're the Legilimens, aren't you?"

And Queenie hadn't seen _that_ coming at all. Behind her, Graves grinned like a wolf, or a skull. Something you didn't want lurching out of the dark at you. "Who would tell you something like that?" Queenie said, trying to smile, keep it light. A misunderstanding. She couldn't quite manage it.

"I'm quite a good listener," Senator Picquery said. "Take a seat."

There was a roaring in her ears. Below it, should could hear Graves' thoughts -- _if she says no, can we Obliviate her, or is that a crime back in the States?_

"If you Obliviate me," Queenie found herself saying, as she sat, clenching her hands tight on the arms of the chair, "I will tell everyone every secret I ever rip from your mind. And believe me, I'm better at mind-bending than you will ever be."

Senator Picquery looked back at Graves, a graceful motion that revealed the long line of her throat. Was she being mocked? Queenie wondered frantically. Were they seeing how far they could push her?

 _Idiot_ , Picquery thought, but fondly. "Percy," she said aloud. "Get out."

He went.

Senator Picquery sat on her desk, crossing her legs so that her boot almost brushed Queenie's knee. She wore slacks, like Tina. Unlike Tina, hers were well tailored, and made her look long and fierce, rather than kind of frumpy and familiar. "I apologize," she said, resting her hands on her knee. "Percy becomes over enthusiastic sometimes. He was more at home in the war than he ever has been here. We would never Obliviate you." _Never,_ her thoughts reiterated. It was strange, to be so directly addressed by someone who wasn't Tina.

"Forgive my lip, Senator, but that's an awfully low bar," Queenie said. Her back ached a little, with how straight she held it.

"Low enough to trip over," Picquery said, and thought, _Wisconsin's Senator takes bribes and Obliviates the bribers to think he said no. Almost a victimless crime, but something you should know_.

"What do you want?" Queenie demanded.

"Oh," said Picquery, looking almost surprised. "I want to be friends."

"You want me to _spy_ ,” Queenie said.

"Eventually," she admitted easily. "But I would hardly start a friendship with such a demand."

"No," Queenie said, and stood, storming for the door. "You're not the first, and you won't be the last, and I won't do it."

She slammed the door behind her and met Graves' eyes as she looked up and he peeled away from the wall. A shiver worked its way down her spine. _A pity_ , Picquery thought, the thought clear and focused, and lancing straight to Queenie's heart. _I would have liked being friends, Malka._

Queenie shook her head and brushed past Graves as she retreated back to the wand permit office. They could get their own lunch.

 

> Senator Picquery’s amendment to the Statute of Secrecy passed more quickly than any previous major amendments and has, so far, successfully taken the pressure off of rural schools and communities, while reassuring city wizards that their safety is paramount. It’s a deft bit of both lawmaking and bi-partisan teamwork, and has led to rumors that she’s considering a run at the 1920 Presidential election…

New York Magical Times, 1919

 

There was a food cart in front of MACUSA whose owner was likely not magical, but no one was quite sure. And besides, his food was good enough, and had a wide enough variety, that no one was going to ask questions and possibly get him either Obliviated and moved or insulted and moved. Queenie was always amused at how the Statute of Secrecy became more of a suggestion, in such circumstances. Either way, he called himself kosher, and she and Tina got lunch from him regularly, when they hadn’t had time to make their own the night before.

She’d successfully avoided Senator Picquery for almost a year when she ran into her at the food cart. Queenie felt her shoulders square, regardless how far the other woman had risen in her estimation. There could, after all, be only one reason to corner her on a Burner street like this:

“I said no.”

“I understand, Miss Goldstein,” Seraphina approached the sausage vendor with a smile. It was an expression not dissimilar from the posters hanging in the hallway outside of the wand permit office. The key difference being that this smile looked fond, where the other was toothy, cold for all of its beauty. “I’m only here for a bratwurst.”

Queenie let herself chuckle, feeling embarrassed in hindsight. At least Seraphina had the good grace not to chastise her. “Best in town.”

“Agreed.” Seraphina smiled again, warm and welcoming. “I come here when I want to celebrate.”

“And what is it we’re celebrating today, Senator?” Queenie placed her hands on her hips. “Of your many accomplishments.”

Seraphina bit her lip, considering, then opened her mouth to speak.

“Goldstein!” The man at the stall leaned over the counter, waving a thick beef sausage in a bun and a handful of napkins at her. Queenie rushed forward to claim her prize and she found herself dawdling by the condiments until he called Seraphina’s name. There was just something about the Senator that she _liked_ , despite herself. Call it respect. Queenie knew what it was like to struggle with other’s expectations, and she’d never accomplished it with such panache as Seraphina.

“Do you want company on the way back?” Queenie offered, catching a bit of falling relish with the corner of her pinky.

“That would be lovely, thank you,”

The walk back was quiet, broken by passing thoughts--a few that Queenie wished she could follow just a bit longer, like reading a very good book over someone’s shoulder and never catching the cover--and the taste of sausage. Seraphina’s mind beside hers was a smooth rush of thoughts she couldn’t grasp more than impressions of. They flitted quickly from the burn on the tip of her tongue to a vague worry Queenie couldn’t parse, and under it all was a deep hum of contentment. Queenie jumped at the sound of Seraphina’s spoken voice.

“I’ve been writing to my mother for,” Seraphina had that thoughtful look from before they were handed their food, “nearly a year, with no word.”

“I’m sorry,” said Queenie, because while the other woman didn’t seem maudlin over the fact, it felt the sort of thing she should say, nonetheless.

“She just wrote back, today, in her way.” Seraphina turned her head to smile. Even if it wasn’t strictly about her, all that fondness focused on Queenie was staggering. Seraphina lifted her sausage. “And that’s why I’m celebrating.”

“I’m so happy for you!” Queenie laid a hand on her wrist. Even Seraphina’s shields weren’t that good. Sense-memory rushed over her. The warmth of Georgia sun and the smell of fresh cut grass. Honey on her tongue. The words, “Do not expect me to forgive you.” But Seraphina didn’t seem to mind. If she did, she hid it better than anyone had ever hidden anything from Queenie.

They walked in silence for a few feet before Seraphina spoke again. “Your parents…,”

Queenie’s smile stayed, stretched out into something more fragile. “Hm?”

“Immigrants. A butcher and a clerk.” Seraphina tosses out the grease paper that had wrapped her food and slowly wipes the pads of her fingers down with a napkin. “Don’t you think they’d want more for you?”

Queenie didn’t bother to ask how she knew what her parents did. Maybe Tina told her, maybe she looked at her files. She didn’t care.

“Did yours?”

“No.”  The smile Seraphina wore now was smaller, sharper. “We can’t always please our parents, I suppose. Sometimes you have to think of yourself,” she straightened, looking every inch her poster. “I mean it, everything I’ve said during my campaign. I’ve always wanted more. For my community. For myself.”

“You’ll say anything, won’t you?”

Seraphina shrugged. “I really want you to work for me.”

Queenie smiled thinly. “You know the answer.”

“Don’t have to be a mind-reader,” Seraphina agreed amiably. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

 

“I can’t _believe_ her,” Queenie said, pacing the living room. It wasn’t totally satisfying, since she had to keep detouring around furniture. Tina mm-hm’d and flipped another page in her book. “Trying to get my guard down by being…honest! And _nice!_ And, and sharing things about her family!”

“How dare she,” Tina drawled, thinking loudly about her book. She didn’t like it much, but it was popular in the auror’s bullpen, so she was struggling through.

“Well, I won’t do it!” Queenie said, and flounced into a seat.

“As long as that’s settled,” Tina said.

 

In the end, Seraphina didn’t need Queenie’s help to get elected. She swept the election, and won by a landslide. Queenie wore her nicest dress to the inauguration even though there was no chance anyone but Tina would see it.

And then, after the speech, Graves melted out of the crowd and took her by the elbow. _She’d like to see you_ , he thought, and Queenie waved a frantic goodbye to Tina before he pulled her away. His grip wasn’t tight enough to hurt, but it was certainly tight enough that she couldn’t get away without making a fuss.

He brought her to the President’s office, a sprawling space dominated by a desk and a spelled window that showed an eagle’s eye view of the city. Seraphina leaned against her desk, backlit by the window, and somehow ethereal and breathtaking. Queenie reached for her mind by instinct and gasped.

Her thoughts were moving so _fast_. Queenie’d known she was intelligent — you couldn’t _meet_ Seraphina and not know that — but this was beyond that. This was…overwhelming.

Seraphina looked up at the sound, and her thoughts narrowed down to a singular focus. _That_ was overwhelming, too. Queenie pulled her mind back, tried to stuff cotton in her mental ears.

“Have you reconsidered?” Seraphina said. “As President, I could use the help.”

Queenie licked her lips. “How’s your mother, Madame President?”

Seraphina favored her with a tilt of her head and a flick of her eyes. A hit scored. “How kind of you to remember. Do you want to ask her yourself?”

“She came?”

Seraphina smiled. It was a small, private sort of smile, that had nothing in common with the posters she beamed from on every corner. “It was a surprise to me, as well.”

“Shouldn’t you be with her now?”

“It’s been a while since we’ve spoken. So much time together is…an adjustment, for the both of us.”

“Well,” Queenie said, shifting uncomfortably. “You should take her to Coney Island, while she’s in the city. If I stay much longer,” she burst out, “you’ll say something clever, and I really do like you, and I think you’ll be an excellent President but I don’t want to work for you, and I’d like you to stop asking.”

“Oh,” Seraphina said, and looked very gravely at her, mirth dancing in her eyes, mind a sweet hum of pleased happiness. “Well, I won’t keep you then.”

Queenie nodded and fled.


	5. Seraphina, 1921-1925

> Our new President has chosen to enact a more distant relationship with our European brethren, likely due to her experiences in their Great War, but that has not stopped concerning word from crossing the Pond. Not even half a decade after the Burner world dragged our own into chaos, a distinctly magical threat appears on the horizon — Gellert Grindelwald, whose name you may recall.
> 
> Grindelwald first made headlines during the war, when he and his followers destroyed a German encampment without provocation. The Obliviations that had to be preformed were an impossible scale, and the wizarding world remains unsure whether they will hold. This most recent news is equally as concerning. Grindelwald has slipped his minders. He could be anywhere. Now, we beg of our readers, do not panic. If you suspect that a loved one has been swayed by his rhetoric and may give him shelter, please reach out to the appropriate authorities!…

The New York Ghost

 

> _Firefly,_
> 
> _I suppose I should call you President now, if only because I didn’t believe you could do it. How silly of me. Since you were born, bloody and screaming, I knew that you would shake the world. As you got older, I thought that perhaps that was a mother’s silliness…you were only a girl, after all, though a well loved one. How could you change the world? So many have tried and failed. Cynicism overwhelmed me._
> 
> _That was wrong of me. Our family has always had a gift for prediction — nothing so silly as Divination, nothing that can be taught or learned, just felt. But I’m sure you know that by now. Why else would you have gone to war? Ah, but that’s my bitterness again. And I should not be bitter that you’ve proved me wrong._
> 
> _I am not, truly, and I hope that some day you will believe me again. I have sent some honey from my bees to show you sweet my mood is now. After all, you are alive, and I can feel the world changing from here. Everything either of us ever wanted._
> 
> _I have kept the bees up to date on my life. Perhaps the honey will pass the news along. If it does not, you must write. I don’t care how busy you are. I’m your mother, and so I deserve a portion of your time. Have you learned to delegate yet?_
> 
> _Love,_
> 
> _Mama_

Though Adesina had come up for her inauguration, their relationship had still not recovered from her stint at war. It had been an uncomfortable reunion, even after all the letters Seraphina had written, and the occasional wordless gifts Adesina had returned — a peach jam so sweet it threw her full-bodied into reminiscence of the summers of her childhood, a silken head wrap she wore for inauguration, a foxes skull, delicately wired together. She put the skull on her desk, so that it would look at her as she worked. A reminder, perhaps.

When Adesina came up, she didn't stay with Seraphina. She got a hotel room, and watched the inauguration from the crowd. She only approached after, to stand in the sprawling office that Seraphina did not yet feel was hers. Adesina was careful not to touch anything, not the walls or the door or the desk, as she stood in the middle of the floor, very still.

"You did it," she had said, and Seraphina hovered around her, afraid to offer her a seat and cause offense, afraid to breathe and cause her to disappear. "I didn't think you could."

"I told you I'd make them respect me," Seraphina said, pride threading her words.

"You made them elect you. Keep your eyes wide. Keep that Graves boy at your back."

"I will, Mama," Seraphina said, feeling very small once more.

Adesina had nodded, sharply, decisively, and taken Seraphina's hands in her own. "You've done well, firefly," she'd said, and Seraphina had to blink hard. "Stay alive. You've the weight of the world on you now. Don't let it bear you down."

She'd dropped Seraphina's hands after squeezing them, then strode from the room and Disapparated once she was out of the wards. Seraphina had taken a few deep breaths, then sent Percy for Ms. Goldstein.

The woman's continued refusal to work for her was a disappointment but not a surprise. And things were not so bad that she truly needed a Legilimens of Ms. Goldstein's caliber. The government she'd inherited was stable enough -- she started replacing key positions of course, but MACUSA was a machine that only occasionally needed a mechanic to clean out the gears. 

Of course, that could only last so long as there was no one throwing grit in them. Grindelwald -- she woke with his name gritted between her teeth. Little as she cared for Rappaport's Law, she cared infinitely less for men who measured magic as worth. She knew men who thought their ways were best. She'd put them in the ground, or on their knees, or merely moved their policy proposals to the bottom of the pile. But Grindelwald's fanatics had started popping up across the country.

Here one killed a Burner, there one destroyed the center of a mid-sized Burner town. Smuggling in dangerous things went up, as did magical creature poaching.

"Percy," she complained one night, slumped over her desk and another report of Obliviations required, "how can one man cause me such trouble from Europe? I want my time consumed by the natterings and infightings of my own Congress."

He massaged the back of her neck with a strong hand. "You could always write a sternly worded letter to Kanzler Binder, tell him to deal with his own mess."

She scoffed. "Brilliant, Percy, why didn't I think of that."

He grinned at her, not quite the same boyish smirk from their Ilvermony days, but familiar all the same. 

There was little she could do at the moment, besides what she had already done -- strengthened security at access points, given her aurors extra training, started trying to weed out his fanatics, and besides, she needed to delegate at some point.

"This is your job," she told Percy, and he gave her neck another squeeze.

"It is," he agreed. "Will you allow me to do it?"

"Take initiative, Percy," she said mildly, hiding her grin in her hand. "This is why I'm President, you know."

"I thought it was ambition," he said. "Consider me corrected, Horned Serpent."

"Out, Wampus," she said. "Send my assistant in, will you?"

Percy sketched a deep, sarcastic bow as he backed out. Her assistant, John Zhou, came in shortly after, so quick and quiet she might have suspected Apparition if she hadn't hired him for exactly that skill. Well, that and his ability to make paperwork both metaphorically and literally dance. He was less skilled with people than she might have liked, but he was impossible to get around when she'd told him to say "No," and was inexhaustible about following up until people did what she'd asked them too.

He was invaluable.

And there was more to her work than the fears of an egotist. "Tell me what I've missed," she said.

"California wants to put alchemy back on the table."

"No," Seraphina said without thinking. The actual gold in the hills had no appeal to those that wanted to make their own, and she was tired of hearing this argument.

"Obviously," Zhou said. "I told Senator Lu that she could request a state-wide alchemical permit once we've received all of the back taxes they owe.” His tone made clear the subtext of that meeting had been _you can’t handle the money you do have_.

Seraphina sighed happily. "I don't regret you."

"High praise, Madam President," Zhou said, sounding genuinely flattered. "New Jersey has complaints about magic runoff in the Hudson causing magical creature mutations. And the Bayou is requesting an exemption to Rappaport’s Law.”

Her head snapped around and she pinned him with a look. “What?”

“Senator Azaïs says that witchcraft is part of the area and that Burners already accept or fear it as it is, and that Obliviations make no difference when everyone knows the woman down the street is a witch. She’s appealed to your race.”

Seraphina’s mouth twitched. It was a good appeal — she knew Black magic and black magic were much the same in some parts of the country. “Let me see the request.”

He handed it over and she skimmed it quickly — two pages of direct appeal, then thirty pages of citations and examples.

“If she can get it through Congress, I’ll sign it,” Seraphina decided. “I won’t issue executive orders so blatantly along my biases. There would be a revolt.”

Zhou did not quite smile, but he did bob agreeably. “And will you let Congress know that?”

“Mm,” Seraphina said. “Which part?”

“Just so,” he said, and whisked out of the room.

 

Senator Azaïs joined her for lunch the next day. She brought a homemade gumbo thick enough to stand up a spoon in and set the dish in the center of Seraphina’s desk, on top of several Bills waiting signing. Once the main course was down, she magicked up dishes and rice. “I never make gumbo with magic,” she confided, as she shooed Seraphina into her seat. Amused, Seraphina went. “Never thickens right.”

“Of course,” Seraphina agreed, spooning gumbo onto her rice. “You know I can’t push your exemption through.”

Azaïs grinned at her, teeth very white in her dark face. She looked nothing like Adesina, but she’d cultivated a rather matronly aura and even Seraphina was occasionally taken in by it. “Of course,” she returned. “And I will only make the token effort to convince you. This is a friendly lunch. They assume we are friends already, after all.”

“So we might as well be?” Seraphina said, arching an eyebrow.

Azaïs nodded and then waved her hand. “Eat. We can’t be friends if you don’t like my gumbo, so might as well find out where we’re going from here.”

Seraphina didn’t bother to hide her smile, and took a bite. Her eyes slid closed, but she didn’t moan, so it wasn’t as embarrassing as it could have been. “You use okra,” she said, when she’d swallowed.

Azaïs said, "I thought you might like that."

"Well," said Seraphina and took another bite, chewed meditatively. "Let's be friends."

They talked through the lunch meeting and Azaïs left her with an understanding, and half a pot of gumbo. 

It was just unfortunate that not everyone was so easily appeased.

 

> _Picquery,_
> 
> _Bad news, but isn’t it always? Wish we could talk for more than war and illness. We’ve lost Grindelwald entirely. Sources say he’s headed your way. I’d say it’s a bit of bad luck for you, and wash my hands of it, but he’s bad luck for us all. His fanatics have been causing trouble everywhere I look, and twice where I don’t. They had to move for America sooner or later._
> 
> _Grindelwald is a threat to us all, to our way of life. I'm sure I don't need to tell you exactly how dangerous he is, and how seriously you must take this threat, but I will anyway. Madam President, I know you served in the war. I did as well. I know you were a hero, closed the trenches and drowned thousands in mud. I didn’t do anything so noble as that, but we’ve both watched friends choke to death on evil air. I assure you, what Grindelwald heralds is a horror worse than any we witnessed in the trenches._
> 
> _An all out war between Muggle and magic. [A large blotch of ink, as if his pen hesitated and bleed all his worries onto the parchment.] No time to rewrite this letter, I’m so worried. And that should worry you._
> 
> _It’s time to batten down the hatches, Picquery. Something wicked this way comes._
> 
> _Heinrich Eberstadt_

 

Seraphina had to admit, if only to herself, that she did not like the tone of Eberstadt’s letter. He was a generally disagreeable man, and the condescension that dripped from every word had her hackles up. Her lot would not be worse, if they ruled over Burners, instead of existing in an uncomfortable Side-Along.

Some childish part of her was tempted to write back and say as much... "Dear Heinrich, exposure would only allow me to fight more effectively for the rights of my community. Not the magical one, the one you always veil your references to -- the "people like me" you worry so for..."

She wouldn't. But the temptation was there. She breathed through it. She wanted to call her mother. She wanted to take off her boots and walk through the grass and feel the land in her bones.

As President, she didn't have many opportunities to relax. MACUSA had no gardens, no exposed earth, and to go to Central Park was to surround herself with Burners. Anything out of the city was too far, and was poor use of her constituents time. She missed Georgia, and the heat, the green, the wide open lands. This city was making her claustrophobic.

She had a small garden in her office. "Garden" was a generous term. A few potted herbs and flowers, arrayed on the tables nearest her false window. The light reached them all the same. She went over and thrust her fingers into the soil under the mint. Mint would forgive her the intrusion. She stayed there, feeling the traces of green life until she was calm.

Then she went back to her desk and wrote her response with dirt still under her nails and in the wrinkles of her knuckles. “Thank you, Eberstadt, for your concern. I have already increased the patrols, and tightened my borders. I will pass your concerns on to my Head of Security.”

 

When she was done with the letter, she called Percy in. He rubbed her neck without being asked, working the knots out with large, warm hands. “Grindelwald?” he guessed.

“Grindelwald,” she confirmed.

When Percy left, the problem did not.

What she could really use was a dozen more aurors, she reflected. Why be conservative? She could use a hundred more loyal aurors, people she could really trust. And she could use a better Congress, while she was asking for impossible things. One that was actually capable of working together, and accomplishing anything, rather than fighting like cats in a bag.

The sensor spell on the door told her who was there before she heard footsteps carefully picking their way across her ringing marble floor. She'd put down carpet where she walked frequently, and along the window behind her desk, but she left the approach bare. It made an impact on people, when they had to hear their own steps.

Queenie Goldstein set a coffee tray down on the corner of her desk and started to make a cup up the way she liked it, thick and sweet. "You're worrying an awful lot," Queenie said and Seraphina rolled her head to look at her, instead of the letter in front of her.

"Are you reading my thoughts?" she asked mildly. If she was, Seraphina would have to work on her Occulemency again.

"Not so direct as all that," Queenie said. "Mostly, you've got this little crease between your eyebrows. Right here." She tapped herself on the forehead. Seraphina mimicked the motion, and consciously relaxed until the wrinkles she felt smoothed. "Much better."

"What would I do without you," Seraphina murmured tonelessly and Queenie flushed brick red.

"Sorry," she said. "Your tray will return when you're done with it." She fled.

Seraphina sighed and took a sip of her coffee. It was as good as always. She didn't quite feel guilty -- Queenie had taken quite a liberty for someone who refused out of hand to be so much as friends, but. But. There were better ways to go about it.

She couldn't spare much thought for the matter. She was a busy woman, after all, and busier every day. Instead of worrying overmuch, she scrawled a quick note and tucked it under her coffee cup when she put it back on the tray empty.

"Thank you," it said. Seraphina would not beg forgiveness, but she could take an offering of peace and return it. She returned to her work without another thought for the matter.


	6. Queenie, 1926

> GRINDELWALD ATTACKS INTENSIFY, RISKING WAR WITH BURNERS.
> 
> Has President Picquery done enough to prepare? Several of the attacks have been carried out with wandless magic, giving rise to fears about the effectiveness of the wand permit office. Sources have even said that the President herself uses wandless magic…
> 
> The New York Ghost, 1926

 

Tina had teased her about the note she’d tucked into her mirror, but Madame Picquery had lovely handwriting, and how often was a Goldstein going to have a President apologizing to them, anyway? Well, apologizing wasn’t what it sounded like, but Queenie knew a peace offering when she saw one, and her own peace offering was good faith.

That teasing lasted up until Queenie came home one day to find Tina laid out over the couch, raw voiced from crying. She didn’t need to ask what had happened — Tina’s mind was playing the whole messy scene on painful repeat. So she just brought a glass of water over and sat next to her and rubbed her back.

After that, things started going wrong. The attacks, of course, and news of Grindelwald, and the stirrings of a new war.

What Queenie cared about, though, was that Director Graves was acting oddly, most of all that he’d fired Tina. He’d never held Tina’s connection to Queenie against her before, and Tina had done the right thing, she _had_ , protecting that Burner boy from his Abigail Williams reborn mother. And his thoughts, which had always been very straightforward and difficult to avoid, had gotten foggier. A skillful Occulemency, one that would take effort to break through, which was a rudeness Queenie avoided.

Not that she had the time to be tempted — he was hardly around anymore, always off on some mysterious business. Queenie wouldn’t have even noticed the strangeness in his behavior if Tina weren’t complaining so bitterly, every time they were alone together in the wand permit office.

“I thought he _liked_ me,” she said again, stacks of papers fluttering around her, completely disorganized. Queenie did a quick spell to get them in order again.

Tina’s thoughts were muddied and hurt, and Queenie loved her sister dearly, but she was a little sick of examining the situation. She’d done more baking in the past week than the past two months. She dreamed of flour. She sneezed in remembrance. “He _did_ ,” she said. “Probably it’s just that Grindelwald mess. Everyone’s on high alert, and there must be no signs of weakness. You’ll be promoted back up to auror the second it’s all dealt with.”

“I hope you’re right,” Tina said dismally, wand drooping in her fingers.

After a moment of focus, her thoughts started gearing up for more recriminations, so Queenie hurriedly got a tea tray together and trotted from the room, throwing, “Be back soon, love you!” over her shoulder as she went.

She'd set out without a specific destination in mind -- the bullpen maybe, aurors always needed more tea or coffee -- but found her feet had set her towards the President's office. She was still smarting from her last overture of friendship, but something drew her back, every time. It wasn't rare, to be drawn to the President.

Men whispered about her swamp magic and how it beguiled, but they never did it where she could hear, and they never did it aloud around women. It was just Queenie's poor luck, how loud they thought it.

She made herself stop in the bullpen, and lost half the carafe to some wild eyed aurors. She turned to the elevator, and found she didn't have to hit the button herself, because Graves already had. She followed the line of his arm up to his face, and he smiled at her, more charming than he usually bothered with.

She crossed her arms and let her magic keep the carafe level. "Mr. Graves," she said, frosty. Behind her, she heard an amused spike of thought -- _Goldstein's pissed, bet it's about her sister_ \-- and she tossed her head as an almost acknowledgement.

"Miss Goldstein," he returned. "After you." He gestured her in as the elevator arrived and the spelled doors sprang open.

She went, though the hairs on the back of her neck rose. She'd never really been easy with him after he wanted to Obliviate her, but her anger was making the uneasiness more potent. And his mind was closed to her, a wall of noise that gave her a headache when she brushed against it.

When the doors closed and the elevator began its lurching travels, she turned to him. He raised an eyebrow. "Why did you fire my sister, Mr. Graves?" she asked, pleasant as pie, or trying to be.

"Well," he said, with a curve of smile, "she caused quite a mess. We don't normally _promote_ for such things."

"Don't play stupid, Mr. Graves," Queenie demanded, and a second eyebrow joined the first, high on his forehead. "Tina should have been put on probation, not fired. She's one of the hardest working aurors in the bullpen, and one mistake shouldn't be enough to ruin her chances." Her tone had veered towards strident at the end, so Queenie took a breath and forced herself to settle.

"Hardest working, maybe," he conceded, seeming totally at ease with her anger. It infuriated her further. "Not best, or most talented, or wisest, or cleverest. Tina..." He tapped his tongue against his teeth and sighed. "I'm sorry to say this, especially since you obviously think so highly of your sister, but Tina only has to work so hard because she is not cut out to be an auror. Neither of you will understand this for a while, but this is truly a kindness."

The rage that rose up in her was so intense her spell shuddered and the carafe wobbled. Graves just tilted his head as if to include her in the poor estimation, and before she could draw back her hand and strike him, the elevator wheezed to a stop and the doors creaked open.

"I'll see you around, Miss Goldstein," he said, and nodded, and left.

"I'll see you around, Miss Goldstein," she repeated under her breath, mocking, and let the doors close around her again. No way was she going to the President's office like this. But she couldn't go back to the wand permit office, where Tina was waiting and easy to hurt. "Damn," she said, and hit a floor at random. She'd walk until she was out of tea, and then she'd figure out what to do with herself.

 

That night, she was so engrossed in her own anger that she wasn’t paying attention to Tina’s, just making soothing noises. Well, she wasn’t paying attention until Tina said, “You don’t understand. You’ve never wanted anything.”

“What?” she said. “I want plenty of things.” More than she’d even told Tina about.

“Like _what_?” Tina said. “You’re content to putter around and mind everyone’s business for them and never try to use any of your skills for anything big or important. For God’s sake, Queenie, all you do is serve hot drinks and clean the john!”

Queenie blinked. “I-“

“You failed out of school on purpose, and you’ve turned down offer after offer from the President! No wonder you don’t understand — everything’s always been handed to you, and you’ve always pushed it away!”

Queenie’s eyes were hot. Tina wasn’t angry at her, she reminded herself. She was just an easy target.

“Were you ever going to tell me what he said?” Tina asked, voice small and Queenie breathed out. _Oh_.

“Who told you? No one should have heard.”

“He, um,” Tina blinked rapidly, but didn’t cry. Queenie moved towards her, then stopped before they touched. “He told the bullpen. In case anyone else thought to argue my case. Anyone displaying initiative like mine, he said, had better be really sure of everything, or they’d be in the permit office with me.”

“Oh, Teenie,” Queenie said. “I’ll hex his john. See if people take him seriously with wee on his shoes.”

Tina snorted, a little watery. “I’m sorry I said those things.”

“I don’t blame you,” Queenie said and finally allowed herself to hug Tina. It took a moment, but Tina hugged her back, pressing her forehead into Queenie’s shoulder, and using the skin contact to make sure her apologies were loud and clear.

 

> Tensions have been high since an unnamed auror broke Rappaport’s Law. The mysterious attacks continue to ravage the city, bewildering both magical and Burner governance. President Picquery declined to comment on the situation and possible connections.
> 
> Ghost Post, 1926

 

Queenie loved Tina a great deal, but Tina was not cut out for work in the wand permit office, nor did she try to be. On a personal level, Queenie had sympathy for that — she certainly understood — but on a professional level, it was an absolute joy to wave Tina out of the office on the thinnest of pretexts.

Most of those pretexts were because Tina planned on skulking around that Second Salemite woman and making sure she was treating her kids right, so Queenie was more than happy to cover for her. On a multitude of levels. Today, she was happy for the chance to work through some backlog and putter around MACUSA without having to listen to Tina’s muttering.

When she finished her work for the day, she wasn’t sure what to do with herself. Things were still stiff between her and the President, never mind where she might have tucked any thank you notes, and going to the bull pen carried the risk of running into Graves. She had a slight headache, more than she wanted to be around a lot of people with.

And at home she had a dress she was mending, and some quiet and ease. That was enough to decide her. She headed home to work on her dress, alternating between a spell and hand sewing for the simple pleasure of the silky fabric between her fingers.

_Queenie_ , she heard, Tina’s thoughts buzzing with nerves, _I’ve got company_.

Behind Tina’s thoughts, she could hear two strangers — and then they were at the door, and she was staring frankly. A Burner! How interesting! A Brit, too. What _had_ Tina gotten herself into?

“Teenie,” she said, surprised, pleased, “you brought men home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that wraps up part one! The rest of fall/winter is going to be very busy for me, but I'm planning to have part two start going up in January -- if you want to keep up with part two, please subscribe to the series or follow me on [tumblr](http://www.alamorn.tumblr.com) to get update notifications.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who's followed along with this! I know this is a deeply niche fic, and I really treasure every comment and kudos I've gotten. I hope to see you all in January!


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